[Seattle-editorial] RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1, Issue 845

[Gentry Lange]

Jonathan,

2nd hand reporting would be what this post has done, by putting quotes
around the statement without first hand knowledge of the situation (as I
believe this was culled from the other posts). The quotes give the piece the
appearance of coming from someone, who this is other than me is unknown to
me. My original post was made after receiving a call from one of the people
who was in Jail at the time, I also followed up on the story by contacting
both the SPD, the FBI, the NLG, as well as by going to the arraignment,
talking to the person's father and numerous others involved in the story.
Eartha from Michigan Indymedia also spent most of the day helping me
research this story as well. To phrase what I did as "potentially explosive
secondhand rumors as news" is just wrong. This is rather what both Indymedia
Portland and now Indymedia Seattle have done at this point. My statement as
to 2nd hand information is aimed at the use of my statement as quoted
material.

I understand trying to quell the rumors, etc. And I understand that allowing
anyone to dictate the story to us is also problematic. However without a
source that's willing to provide further details, and others who are willing
to corroborate her original story, and no official sources, I stand by what
I said originally... this is rumormilling the story and bad journalism
(admittedly this is what I did when I put the original story up, but it was
first hand info, just unsubstantiated by additional sources). Further since
I get editorial collective posts as a batch email, it wasn't until after the
rewrite went up that I even knew that a story was going to go on our front
page. However, to me it appears that the story was put together without even
waiting to hear back from me, or by calling me directly.

Mysteriously removing the story was a bad decision on my part, however, I
did email the editorial collective and both Walt and Brandon were in the
space helping me at the time. So it was not done in secret. My original
newswire post was rather inflammatory as well, and maybe next time a friend
calls me from jail and says they are being investigated by the FBI for
potential links to terrorist organizations, I will think more before I leap.
However, it freaked me out and I did what I did. It has caused me to
reevaluate how I handle these situations, and I apologize to everyone for
the mistakes I made here.

To end on a good note, the only reason I threw out the "bad journalism"
thing was that Indymedia Seattle is usually of the highest quality, and
since you Jonathan are usually responsible for 90% of what goes on the wire,
you have set your own bar pretty high.

Gentry

-----Original Message-----
From: seattle-editorial-bounces at lists.indymedia.org
[mailto:seattle-editorial-bounces at lists.indymedia.org]On Behalf Of
seattle-editorial-request at lists.indymedia.org
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 12:06 PM
To: seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
Subject: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1, Issue 845


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Today's Topics:

   1. RE: hey Gentry (Gentry Lange)
   2. Re: RE: hey Gentry (jonathan lawson)
   3. 	FSTV Coverage: TAKE BACK AMERICA Conference - 6/15 (julie)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 15:35:57 -0700
From: "Gentry Lange" <g at art13.com>
Subject: [Seattle-editorial] RE: hey Gentry
To: "Troy Prouty" <poeftr at hotmail.com>,
	<seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org>
Cc: jl at u.washington.edu
Message-ID: <IEEKKFAAODDNFHBDFNNCCEGPCCAA.g at art13.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

No, but I was contacted by the folks arrested and told to remove the story
for legal reasons pertaining to their prosecution. To keep mentioning it is
apparently not going to help them out... And as the source is mum, and mine
is only 2nd hand information, I feel it is both against their wishes to keep
discussing it, and not particularly good journalism, as it is
unsubstantiated by anyone other than me at this point. Without their
statements and further support, I might as well just have made it up. Not
that I did.

To me it goes against a request made to me by the activists involved, and
could make their legal problems worse. Besides that, all attempts to verify
the account have proven fruitless. They were officially arraigned on felony
burglary charges, and no official sources can prove the original
allegations. My objection is that at this point this is a rumor, however,
there are quotes around the words "flagged for possible links to terrorist
organizations." This makes it sound as if there is a source for this
statement which there is not at this point.

Gentry

-----Original Message-----
From: Troy Prouty [mailto:poeftr at hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 3:23 PM
To: g at art13.com
Subject: hey Gentry


did you make a mistake to post it in the first place?

I am sorry it keeps popping up..

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
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------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 15:53:42 -0700
From: jonathan lawson <jonathan at indymedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Seattle-editorial] RE: hey Gentry
To: <seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org>
Cc: jl at u.washington.edu
Message-ID:
	<5.1.0.14.2.20030609153851.00b735a8 at jl.deskmail.washington.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

Making community-based editorial judgements about how to contextualize
significant postings to the newswire (including ones that mysteriously
disappear) is not bad journalism as you suggest. The real lesson about
journalism here is about the consequences of reporting potentially
explosive secondhand rumors as news.

Also, incidentally, while I have no desire to complicate the court cases of
any of the arrestees, who I have a lot of respect for, we as journalists
cannot act as though anyone who becomes the subject of a newswire post
should be allowed to dictate changes to a posting. Comments can add
corrections or additional context; on very rare occasions we can take more
serious action when there is a legal problem. But we have to take the "I"
in IMC seriously.

Gentry, you've been managing the fallout from this story, and I imagine you
have been keeping tabs on where it's been posted, etc. If you want to
remove that section of the feature, it's ok with me--the only reason I
included the info at all was to try to do what you're trying to
do--minimize the damage done by the original post.

Jonathan

editorial member who takes his job seriously

At 03:35 PM 6/9/2003 -0700, Gentry Lange wrote:
>No, but I was contacted by the folks arrested and told to remove the story
>for legal reasons pertaining to their prosecution. To keep mentioning it is
>apparently not going to help them out... And as the source is mum, and mine
>is only 2nd hand information, I feel it is both against their wishes to
keep
>discussing it, and not particularly good journalism, as it is
>unsubstantiated by anyone other than me at this point. Without their
>statements and further support, I might as well just have made it up. Not
>that I did.
>
>To me it goes against a request made to me by the activists involved, and
>could make their legal problems worse. Besides that, all attempts to verify
>the account have proven fruitless. They were officially arraigned on felony
>burglary charges, and no official sources can prove the original
>allegations. My objection is that at this point this is a rumor, however,
>there are quotes around the words "flagged for possible links to terrorist
>organizations." This makes it sound as if there is a source for this
>statement which there is not at this point.
>
>Gentry


------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 15:44:06 -0600
From: "julie" <julie at freespeech.org>
Subject: [Seattle-editorial] 	FSTV Coverage: TAKE BACK AMERICA
	Conference - 6/15
To: <nancy at freespeech.org>
Message-ID: <DEEPLPFJAHENMAPMDFEIOEAACIAA.julie at freespeech.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

FREE SPEECH TV
http://www.freespeech.org/fsitv/fscm2/genx.php?name=home>  -- What Democracy
Looks Like
On DISH Network Channel 9415, part-time on 70 community access cable
stations <http://www.freespeech.org/fsitv/html/affiliates.shtml>  across the
country, and online at www.freespeech.org <http://www.freespeech.org/> .

===============================
<< FREE SPEECH TV ANNOUNCES >>
===============================


WHAT:  FSTV Special Report  Take Back America: Pipe Dream or Battle Plan
WHEN:  Sunday, June 15 at 2 pm, 6 pm and Midnight (all times EST)
WHERE:  FSTV Dish Network Channel 9415
                  & 70 on community access cable stations
<http://www.freespeech.org/fsitv/html/affiliates.shtml>  in 22 states

Take Back America: Pipe Dream or Battle Plan
Special FSTV coverage of events surrounding a conference sponsored by the
Institute for Americas Future in Washington D.C. June 4-6, 2003.
Progressives met to build strategy for taking over the Democratic Party.
Labor unions joined environmental and peace activists to build an effective
opposition to the Bush agenda.

STAY TUNED
At 3 and 7 pm (EST), BILL MOYERS gives a passionate hour-long storytelling
of the history of the progressive movement in the US as part of the Take
Back America conference.

RESOURCE
Campaign for Americas Future -- www.ourfuture.org
<http://www.ourfuture.org/>


=================
<< WATCH // ACT >>
=================

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